After the last presidential election — one which shouldn’t have seen an incumbent Barack Obama win so handily — the search has been on for the soul of the GOP. As immigration continues to shift the demographics of the vote and the country moves left on social issues, finding a candidate who represents traditional American values but can bridge the gap and reach young voters has become an increasingly complex challenge.

Earlier this week, Senator Rand Paul gave a speech at the Berkeley Forum. The talk was on NSA spying and the right to privacy. It was informative, more than a little disconcerting, and unflinchingly honest.

Senator Paul received a standing ovation.

Why does this matter? While it’s difficult to get an exact read on a student body’s ideological orientation, Berkeley has a reputation for being significantly left-of-center. In a media release back in 2005, the college stated that “Liberal freshman outnumber conservatives at Berkeley by more than 4 to 1″.

And yet Senator Paul, a strict constitutionalist, gets an extremely positive response from attendees at the Berkeley Forum, a self-described “non-partisan, student-run organization”.

In political circles, we hear frequent use of the phrase “reaching across the aisle”. But this marks something bigger. Senator Paul is reaching across disparate demographic groups and uniting Americans on core principles that a majority can agree on. Liberty. Privacy. Non-interventionist foreign policy. The importance of protecting the 4th Amendment. The right to not be spied on or targeted for assassination by one’s own government.

Paul is certainly controversial with some conservatives who would prefer to see more centralized authority on moral issues. He’s a big champion of the 10th Amendment, which would send a lot of decisions important to conservatives — like abortion — back to the states. (For the record, Paul is outspokenly pro-life.) He thinks same-sex marriage is also is an issue for the states. These are issues of pragmatism in public policy that Catholics can, in good conscience, disagree on.

But if his victory in the CPAC straw poll — his second year in a row — is any indication, Paul is winning the approval of American Conservatives. This year, he took home 31% of the vote, leaving Ted Cruz in a distant second with just 11%.

And Paul isn’t just looking for conservative voters. He’s reaching out to minorities. He’s changing the opinion of pundits like Bill Maher. And research suggests that if Republicans can win over Millennial voters, who lean Democrat, it will take someone like Paul to make it happen.

With mid-terms this year acting as a bellwether for 2016, Rand Paul may continue a strong early surge as a frontrunner for the path forward for the GOP in presidential politics.

There were many Republicans and conservatives intrigued by the candidacy of Ron Paul in 2012. His son, Senator Rand Paul, is almost a lock to run for president in 2016. (Without kicking up dust, even though I like him in the Senate, Rand would not be my first choice.)

While I am not a libertarian, there are two areas in which libertarian Republicans could move the GOP in a manner which I think is good policy and good politics: defending civil liberties and advancing a more modest foreign policy.

And Rand Paul has been very strong on civil liberties. For that I am thankful.

But I confess, I was delighted to see that the main author of a bill to amend the NDAA — to ensure that all persons on American soil accused of terrorism would receive a trial by jury — was a conservative. Not a libertarian, but a regular constitutional conservative by the name of Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. A former law clerk of Justice Sam Alito, Lee ousted moderate Bob Bennett at the Utah GOP Convention in 2010 in one of the most under-appreciated primary wins of all time.

And thankfully, Mike Lee is not the only conservative who refuses to ignore liberty anytime the word “terrorism” or “security” is uttered.

Sen.-Elect Ted Cruz, R-Texas

In fact, there’s also Senator-elect Ted Cruz of Texas, endorsed by CatholicVote by the way. Cruz stood strongly against the TSA during his Republican primary against establishment candidate David Dewhurst. He made the groping by the TSA agents a major issue in his campaign, mentioning in the Senate debates.

If Republicans want to forestall the appeal of Ron and Rand Paul, they can simply stand strong for liberty. Stop the growth of the national security state. Disband the TSA. Think twicea thousand times before invading another country. Burn the Patriot Act…

Paul is a Tea Party favorite who wants to drastically reduce the size of the government to only those functions explicitly detailed in the Constitution. Sen. Paul is the son of Rep. Ron Paul and both are known for being libertarians.

Adler noted that Sen. Rand Paul introduced the Life at Conception Act, which would declare that children in the womb would also have rights under the 14th Amendment. Unlike a Constitutional Amendment which requires a 2/3rds vote of both Houses and 3/4ths of states to approve, this bill would only need a majority vote in both Houses plus the President’s signature of course.

Paul also has co-authored a Constitutional Amendment that would eliminate automatic citizenship for anyone born on U.S. soil. (Given our impending demographic downturn, I would not support this legislation now.)

Adler can’t help but be snarky on these two proposals:

“So Paul wants to expand the 14th Amendment to cover the fertilized embryos of American citizens while restricting it to exclude the babies of illegal immigrants. It’s not clear where the fetus in an illegal immigrant’s uterus would fit into this equation.”

Oh, how cute when writers think the wrote a funny.

But the last time I checked, Congress is tasked with determining who is a citizen and how. It’s not up to the states to determine this, right? Whether or not you support birthright citizenship or expanding legal protection to unborn children, both of these are worthy for Congress to consider.

But Adler referred to this as “hypocrisy.”

You see, Adler is getting a different Rand Paul than he was expecting. He thought Paul would focus, like his father, on “small-government conservatism” in the tradition of Barry Goldwater. Goldwater opposed LBJ’s government expansion of Medicare and the War on Poverty. In later years, Goldwater also supported legal abortion.

Adler said:

“While Paul might be expected to take after his father in this regard, the causes he has taken up have been surprising. Whereas Ron Paul has focused his career on fiscal conservatism and foreign-policy isolationism, Paul is promoting socially conservative positions.”

Notice how Adler thinks socially conservative positions are incompatible with an agenda of expanding liberty. And yet Adler would continue to deny expanding the right to life of millions of children in the womb.

There’s nothing wrong with liberals saying “I wish all Republicans were like ____.” After all, I recently wrote how I wished that all liberal Catholics were less like Ted Kennedy and more like Sargent Shriver (who was pro-life).

But it is worth noting that any time a liberal complains about conservatives and wishes that they were different, it is almost always about abortion. Despite repeated calls for increased taxation and government expansion into every industry imaginable, liberals like to fashion themselves as advocates of personal liberty.

That’s why liberals “respect” libertarians, who are often much stronger free-market advocates than standard Republicans, but who also (unfortunately) believe that pornography and marijuana should be legal.

To Adler, it is a contradiction for a libertarian like Rand Paul to be pro-life. It is sadly true that most libertarians believe that unborn children don’t deserve to be protected from the violence of abortion. Indeed, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who plans on running for the GOP nomination in 2012, is a pro-choice libertarian.

But both Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul are pro-life libertarians. Both are doctors, too. In fact, Ron Paul is an obstetrician who has delivered thousands of babies. Both of these legislators believe that all persons have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Sorry to break your heart, Mr. Adler.

UPDATE: Catholic blogger Lisa Graas suggests that Sen. Rand Paul’s introduction of this bill is just cover and that he is not truly pro-life. We’ll be watching his votes, that’s for sure. Nonetheless, the point still holds: You can be a libertarian and pro-life.